At least the new Olympic Village has received more enthusiasm. A conscientious updating of a 1960s-style monumental social housing project, its concrete blocks reaching up to 13 stories (high for low-rise London) are somewhat forbidding without mature trees to soften their impact, but have been praised for their high building standards and private central courtyard gardens. Crucially for the project’s claims to benefit local communities, half of these apartments will be reserved for affordable, rent-controlled housing after the games, an invaluable asset in a city with Western Europe’s highest rents.